


Just Keep Smiling

by der_tanzer



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/der_tanzer/pseuds/der_tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid has a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Keep Smiling

Sometimes he came in late. Like the day they went to Miami, when he’d been unintentionally sharp with Garcia. But sometimes, when the forecast was bad or the flashing lights in his head woke him in the coldest dark of night, he was early. The dark protected him as he drove to the office, made it possible to focus long enough to get into the underground parking garage. So long as there wasn’t much traffic. Oncoming headlights were murder.

And sometimes he woke in the cold dark and couldn’t find his focus at all. On those days he called a cab.

“Morning, Dr. Reid.”

“Good morning, Hussein.” Every day this week they sent the same driver. Reid was glad. He didn’t have to give the address, didn’t have to worry about the driver’s skill. Didn’t have to do anything but remember to smile.

Today the lights were red and purple, floating circles that glowed almost hypnotically above the pain before exploding into flares of purest agony. He’d taken his medication, drunk his herbal tea; he’d been good. It wasn’t fair. Sitting in the men’s room, huddled on a toilet seat with his arms wrapped around his knees and his coat over his head, he tried to think of something else. Something that wasn’t this pain, stabbing through his head, his neck, his eyes—this pain that had become almost everything to him. If only he could stop thinking about it…

His phone vibrated softly, reminding him that it was time to go to work. It always vibrated now. He could no longer bear the ring.

“Hey, Dr. Cool,” Morgan called out as Reid stepped through the door. His voice, always a source of comfort in the past, echoed and thundered in the expanse of Reid’s skull.

“Morning,” he said with a cheerful smile. 

“Dude, if you’re gonna wear shades indoors, they have to at least be _sharp_. You wanna be _cool_ , Reid, you gotta _be_ cool.”

“I’m sorry if you’re offended, but the coolness factor wasn’t really a big part of my decision making process,” he shot back, but not without smiling. Reid had learned the hard way that guilt, or emotion of any kind, only made it worse. Like that Star Trek episode where they kept firing on the alien being and the aggression made it stronger.

“So what was?”

“What was what?” Reid asked, blinking rapidly behind his thick black glasses.

“What _were_ the factors in your decision making process?”

“Um…” He kept smiling, clawing back through the pulsing cloud of lights in search a scrap of their conversation. “Star Trek?”

“You know, coming from you I believe that.”

Reid smiled and laughed as if he understood the joke.

***

Hotchner’s voice was fresh acid in the pit of hell that was now Reid’s skull. But he couldn’t drown it out, he needed to hear and understand if he was going to be of any use. He scanned the file in his hands, absorbing the information through watering eyes and storing it somewhere in the cloud of flashing pain. His subconscious was a lot of help, taking in Hotch’s voice and throwing him connections when something clicked with the words in front of him. 

He frowned in concentration, trying to hold onto everything. He needed to be sure that, when he encountered more information later, he still had Hotch’s words to match it to. His eidetic memory had always been more reliable with things he read, but the team insisted on counting on him to remember everything he heard, too.

“Do you see something, Reid?”

He looked up too quickly and the room swam away in a blur of light and color. Blinking hard, he cleared his throat and smiled. He wasn’t sure it was the correct response for this particular situation, but it had gotten him this far.

“Um, no. Well, just that Jessica’s roommate said she moved out on the twelfth, but she never canceled or transferred the utilities that were in her name. Or did she? I might’ve missed…” He scrambled back through the file, humiliated at being caught in an uncertainty. Then Hotch’s voice was drilling into his brain again.

“No, you’re right. Good catch.”

“And why would she move out on the twelfth to begin with? She’d already paid the month’s rent and her employer pays on the fifth and twentieth, so she’s between checks. Also, someone’s using her debit card, but not for anything as extravagant as rent.”

“Right,” Hotch said approvingly, sending a dagger of fire through Reid’s left eye. “So either she’s on the street somewhere, which I doubt, or someone’s doing a reasonable job of pretending to be her. Good enough to fool her ex-roommate.”

“If the roommate _is_ fooled,” JJ murmured.

“We’ll find out in a couple of hours. Wheels up in twenty.”

The team rose as a single unit with an unbearable scraping of chairs and rustling of paper. Hotch snapped his briefcase shut and Reid bit his lips to hold back a scream. He grabbed the edge of the table for support and vaguely detected a hand on his arm.

“Yes?” he said brightly, turning to make out the tall, pale shimmer of agony that was JJ.

“You okay, Reid? Not still afraid of flying, are you?”

“No, not at all. I’m fine.” 

“Good. Because you know how much harder it is to solve these things without you.”

“Actually, I don’t,” he smiled.

“You and your logic. Don’t forget your bag.”

“One time,” he said, finally releasing the table. “One time and you never let it go.”

“You never let anything go anyway,” she reminded him with a laugh. 

Behind his cheap sunglasses, Reid closed his eyes and clung to his smile with all his strength.


End file.
